These Big Tech Partnerships Rewired the Middle East Economy in 2025

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Across the GCC, a new class of technology deals is rapidly reshaping the region’s growth model. They are strategic interventions: hyperscale data centers, sovereign wealth fund-backed AI platforms, cloud region build-outs, and targeted startup support, designed to integrate the region into the AI-first global economy’s value chain.

Here are the most consequential deals of 2025:

1. AI Chip Deals

Humain, an AI company backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, PIF, which was launched to develop and manage AI technologies in Saudi Arabia, secured landmark agreements with NVIDIA and AMD to purchase tens of thousands of next-generation AI chips.

By securing advanced chip supply at a time of global scarcity, Saudi Arabia has positioned itself as a hub for AI, GPU cloud computing, and digital transformation. NVIDIA and Humain will build AI factories with up to 500 megawatts of capacity, which will include NVIDIA’s most advanced GPUs over the next five years.

2. Tech Reset

In May, deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars were announced between the US and Gulf nations. The agreements span sectors including aviation, AI, infrastructure, financial markets, and energy. 

The technology commitments of US firms reflect a recalibration in how global tech leaders view the region. A series of bilateral agreements and corporate commitments were announced between US tech giants across the AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and semiconductor sectors. Alphabet, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, Qualcomm, and Salesforce partnered with major Saudi and UAE entities. 

These partnerships were shaped by the region’s ability to scale, quickly align regulations, and ensure demand through public-sector digitization.

3. LEAP 2025 and the Industrialization of AI Ambition

The $14.9 billion in AI and cloud investments announced at LEAP 2025 revealed how Saudi Arabia is operationalizing its national technology strategy. What distinguished these deals was not their scale alone, but their coherence. Investments spanned AI inferencing capacity, advanced manufacturing, cloud regions, and talent development.

Among the most notable transactions were Aramco Digital’s $1.5 billion partnership with Groq to expand AI inferencing and cloud capabilities, a $2 billion collaboration between Lenovo and ALAT to establish advanced manufacturing and robotics capacity, and Google Cloud’s continued investment in regional AI and cloud infrastructure. 

These moves were reinforced by additional long-term commitments from Qualcomm and Alibaba Cloud, further consolidating the kingdom’s position as a regional hub for AI and digital infrastructure.

LEAP has effectively evolved from a convening forum into a capital and technology allocation engine, illustrating how policy clarity, sovereign capital, and global partnerships can be aligned to accelerate ecosystem formation across the Gulf’s digital transformation.

4. Hyperscale Data Centers as the New Strategic Infrastructure

Across the GCC, hyperscale data center deals accelerated sharply in 2025. Notable deals forged within the region include G42’s multi-gigawatt AI campus in the UAE, developed with US technology partners, KKR’s $5 billion partnership with Gulf Data Hub to expand regional hyperscale capacity across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Kuwait, and G42’s approximately $2.2 billion acquisition of a significant stake in Khazna Data Centers. 

Hyperscale data centers are a core pillar of the national strategies of GCC countries, attracting global players such as Oracle, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon while expanding domestic capacity and advancing economic diversification. 

As cloud-native businesses scale and sovereign AI ambitions emerge, control over compute location has become decisive for economic sovereignty, regulatory authority, and ecosystem anchoring.

According to PwC, regional data capacity is expected to increase to 3.3 GW by 2030. This growth is driven by the rising demand for cloud computing and AI. Saudi Arabia, for example, is spearheading this transformation through initiatives such as the PIF-backed Transcendence AI Initiative and Amazon Web Services’ $5.3 billion investment. 

5. The Rise of the AI National Champion

One of the most distinctive features of the Gulf’s tech landscape is the emergence of government-backed AI entities, such as Humain and G42, that sit at the intersection of state ambition and market logic. 

Their mandate extends beyond commercial returns to include building large-scale AI infrastructure, developing Arabic-language and region-specific models, and serving heavily regulated sectors such as government, healthcare, energy, and finance.

For multinational technology firms, these champions offer a trusted integration layer into complex regulatory environments. For governments, they ensure that critical digital capabilities remain strategically anchored within their own borders. This institutional model reflects a belief that AI, like energy before it, is strategically important to be left entirely to market forces.

6. Startup Mega-Rounds for Sustained Economic Diversification

The Gulf’s largest startup funding rounds in 2025, particularly in fintech, enterprise SaaS, logistics tech, and AI, are best understood as structural investments. Many of these rounds included sovereign funds, state-linked enterprises, or global technology firms with regional ambitions.

The increasing participation in venture funding is part of a deliberate strategy to ensure that digital economy growth translates into sustained economic diversification.

Founders are being backed to build platforms for the region’s payments rails, cloud-native enterprise systems, and AI-driven supply chains, rather than consumer-facing novelties. 

7. National Mandates as Deal Catalysts

Overarching national AI and digital mandates, such as Project Transcendence, have led Saudi Arabia to commit more than $100 billion to AI, advanced computing, and industrial digitalization through public–private partnerships. This strategic framework has actively shaped deal flow by aligning sovereign capital, regulatory direction, and long-term demand.

By aligning regulation, capital, and demand, these frameworks reduce uncertainty for global partners and ensure that individual investments reinforce a coherent national agenda, with deals compounding one another.

Taken together, the Gulf’s biggest tech deals of 2025 reveal a region in the midst of economic rewiring. The shift is visible along three dimensions: from the consumption of digital capability to its production, from fragmented markets to regional scale, and from speed-driven growth to durability-driven advantage.

The result is a form of competitiveness rooted in the strategic orchestration of technology, policy, and partnerships.

The next phase of dealmaking is likely to deepen this trajectory into semiconductor adjacencies, AI governance, industry-specific models, and advanced manufacturing, which is tied to automation and digital twins.